The Other Side (13 page)

Delighted and embarrassed at her friendliness, I stammered breathless apologies, covering my nakedness with my hand. Then I opened the door she had indicated. Damn it all, there were two people in there already, also stark-naked! I slammed the door shut again. The rabble was now surging up the stairs. At the front was a policeman–
now
he came–roaring, ‘Where is the fellow? I’ll report this. And the house will have to be closed down.’ Then the mob. My fair rescuer had disappeared and my bleeding feet seemed to weigh a ton. Taking a deep breath, I climbed up a few more steps and saw, written in large letters like a command, the words I had been waiting for,
Here
. Once more providence had come to my aid! With my remaining strength I opened the door and pushed home the bolt behind me. For the moment I was safe, but the horde was already rattling the lock. ‘Open up! Open up!’ came the piercing cry from a thousand throats.

I looked around like a hunted beast, then a sudden, desperate decision came to me like a flash of lightning. At the risk of falling to my death, I squeezed through a narrow window and felt round for something to hold on to. Yes! There was a wire, a lighting conductor. And with a miraculous confidence which I found incredible, I climbed down it. Silence and darkness all round. I collapsed to the ground, my legs could carry me no farther.

I was lying on a rubbish tip. The driver of a dung-cart on his nightly rounds lifted me up and took me home in his evil-smelling vehicle. My wife saw me arrive from the window. She had had a worrying quarter of an hour, I had not been away for more than that.

A few days later I saw some dogs in the street playing with a bundle of coloured rags from which hung braid and tassels. In that piece of lost property floating round the streets of the Dream city I recognised my old dressing-gown. My enthusiasm for Patera’s creation was definitely a thing of the past.

VI

During the next few days nothing came of my determination to complain. Things were pretty miserable. My feet were bandaged up, swollen and lacerated, and my wife kept to her bed.

At the back of Lampenbogen House was a basement flat where a family with nine children led a half-starved existence. Nine children! Unique in Pearl! The man, who spent his time lounging around and getting involved in brawls, was kept by his emaciated, permanently pregnant wife. She did the housework for us now; the monkey only came occasionally, in the evenings, to visit us. Then, at least, we could relax contentedly for a couple of hours. He used to sit beside my wife’s bed, take her knitting in his feet and knit quickly. While he was doing that he liked to glance through an old copy of the
Dream Mirror
, which he would hold in his hands.

Our new home help quite often used to bring her two eldest girls up with her, which enabled me to confirm my wife’s discovery that children born in the Dream Realm lacked the top section of the left thumb. The little daughter of the editor of the
Dream Mirror
had the same defect, as did even the two sons of His Excellency, the President of the Council. Our good Frau Goldschläger’s brood was short of nine thumbnails, then.

As soon as I was back on my feet the first thing I did was to go and see the doctor. I didn’t like the way my wife’s pulse kept racing. I had several times thought of calling Lampenbogen. Since he owned the house, he was there quite often, but I have always been rather suspicious of doctors and in this uncertain land caution was even more vital. ‘A doctor’s a businessman like any other’, I told myself. ‘If you order a pair of shoes from a shoemaker and he asks to be paid without delivering them you’d laugh him out of court. But you have to pay the doctor even if he’s been no help, even if he’s made the patient worse.’ Lampenbogen was a rich man; he had a fine villa, a pretty wife, a carriage and pair. The apartment block brought in a fair sum, no wonder he grew sleek and lived off the fat of the land. Of course, his wife was said to be a flighty piece. And here was I, with nothing but a few bones to gnaw.

So the doctor came. In his thick fur coat he appeared in the doorway like a walking cube. Whilst he was examining my wife I was admiring the back of his neck. ‘What a succulent joint’, was the cannibalistic thought going through my mind. His advice was a change of air. We should go to the mountains for a few weeks, he said. He didn’t like the way I looked either. When I objected that I wanted to see Patera first, he said, ‘You would do better to forget about
that
‘, and left.

Our little expedition was packed and ready to go. Frau Goldschläger pushed my wife along in her wheelchair to the Square where the horse-drawn omnibus was waiting outside the Post Office. We were packed into the vehicle and the whip cracked. Looking back, the last thing I saw was Frau Goldschläger’s wobbling belly and the farewell smile on her decidedly plain face.

Immediately we had left Pearl we crossed the railway. Our destination was a village in the mountains where we had been told we would find good lodgings in a forester’s house. The rather poorly maintained road meandered its way through the infamous swamps. We also passed a ruined city, a monument from antiquity. The only living creatures we saw were a couple of pelicans. After this wilderness the countryside was more inhabited. There were extensive meadows, potato fields, even vineyards. We drove past large farmhouses with age-blackened thatched roofs. Everywhere the inhabitants watched us pass, many waved to us. These rough country folk in their leather dress sat on benches outside the houses, some of them carving wooden figures just as coarsely thickset as themselves. Despite the fact that many of them resembled crouching animals, I liked them better than the city-dwellers. They seemed less at odds with themselves, less beset with worries. It was here that the strange, mystical customs had arisen, here they were still adhered to, still followed to the letter.

The road forked. A thin tower rose up like a finger over a fresco-covered chapel by the crossroads. ‘The right-hand fork leads to the great Temple’, the coachman told us, pointing with his whip. Now we were driving along a narrow valley. Built against the precipitous rocks high above were what we could only dimly make out as grey huts. Ascetic hermits lived there, or so I had heard. Gradually it grew dark. The clouds came down and gathered into yellowish-brown masses, as if preparing for a storm. In its uniformity the landscape had a solemn grandeur. We were at the foot of the Ore Mountain, a dangerous region at certain times of the year because of the immense magnetic discharges. Today the tension was high, we could see ball lightning rolling round the metallic summit. ‘The mountain is almost completely of iron’, the coachman informed us. It was strange, there was no vegetation to be seen on it, not even parched shrubs or withered grass. It stood there, a dark rust colour, blocking the valley.

Suddenly my wife refused to go on. The air was even more oppressive up here than in the city, she gasped, she couldn’t see a stay in country like this improving her health. I felt the same, my hair was standing on end from the electric charge in the atmosphere. It was best to turn back immediately. My only regret was to have dragged my sick wife out this far. We alighted at a roadside inn to wait for the omnibus going back to the city. My wife was feverish. The landlord and landlady did what they could for her and gave us a helping hand getting onto the coach.

So we set off back. Night fell as we reached the marshes. They gave off an overpowering stench of decay. By the light of the coach-lamps I saw some Mohammedan graves, stones with turbans on top, half submerged in the bubbling marsh water. The dampness made breathing difficult. A rustling and scuttling started up, the demons of the swamp on the move. My wife had shivering fits and squeezed up close to me. It was two o’clock in the morning by the time we got back to the city. I knew now that I was bringing my wife home to die.

VII

The next day I went to see the doctor to tell him about the failure of our expedition. He wasn’t at his villa. On the way back I noticed two male figures. They were following a woman who turned into Long Street in front of me. Then I recognised them. It was my neighbour, the student, and de Nemi. Only now did they seem to realise that they were both pursuing the same quarry. The clash occurred before my very eyes, though I can’t say exactly what happened between them. I just saw the pair of them go into a dark entrance from which a moment later the student’s hat came flying out into the muddy street. So as not to be recognised, and not to get in the way, I crossed over to the other side as quickly as possible. The lady they had been following was there, standing looking at the window of a lending library. I must have seen her before! She was tall, very elegantly dressed and had a thick chignon of chestnut hair. Her face was turned away from me. She couldn’t have noticed anything of the pursuit, for she turned round abruptly and started back the way she had come, towards me. It was Frau Melitta Lampenbogen. I watched admiringly the way she walked, the way she seemed to float on air. Then her gaze hit me … I was staring into a blankness of white … like a blow to the brain.
It was the eyes of the old beggar-woman!

That night was very disturbed. There was a constant clatter of people climbing up and down the stairs. No question of sleep. Another rumour was going the rounds. One of the two millers had disappeared, the younger one, the one who was always cheerful. The other was suspected of having murdered his brother. Nothing certain was known.

‘Two detectives have searched the mill’, Castringius had told me in a conspiratorial whisper. He wanted his job back on the
Dream Mirror
and was desperate for sensational material. A pen-and-wash drawing of his,
The Student’s Wound,
had been sent back by return of post.

I was in an awkward situation. Frau Goldschlager had not come today and I decided to go and see her in her rabbit warren. The room was foul, it was filled with a particularly loathsome smell. A midwife stopped me at the door. Last night Frau Goldschlager had had a stillbirth. I was happy, therefore, to accept Hector von Brendel’s generous offer of the services of his servant–an old, grey tub of lard–for errands. In the three days since I had recognised what a critical state my wife was in I had been in a daze. All my anger and agitation had disappeared. I was incapable of seeing things clearly and just dragged myself round on leaden feet. Listless, apathetic, like a whipped cur, consumed by inner restlessness, I couldn’t settle anywhere. In the house it was unbearable. I couldn’t sit and watch what was happening, it tore my heart to shreds. Get out into the fresh air then! I gave the coffee house a wide berth and turned towards the river-bank. This was usually one of my favourite spots, with the river silently gliding past. Involuntarily my eye was drawn to the mill. It was quivering, as if alive. In a milky light, like a gelatinous layer, it appeared fuzzy, smudged, and exuded some unknown aura which set my whole body vibrating, right down to the tips of my toes. Behind a grimy window stood the miller, looking down at me with a dark expression, full of hatred. Now I left the built-up area, and was heading out past the knacker’s yard, the cattle pens, the brick-works. Before I knew it I had reached the graveyard. I stopped and lit a cigarette. Beyond the wrought-iron gate I caught sight of the gravestones. A shudder ran through me. Grinding my teeth, I raced along unknown streets. Melancholy was trying to force itself on me, but I thrust it out of my mind. I was filled with an icy contempt for everything and everyone, especially Patera.